Misbehaving Greys

The greys have been very naughty lately.  The thing that kills me about them is they know when they're doing something they shouldn't -- and choose to do so anyway.  I had some meetings this week which resulted in Thomas having to be alone with them for a few hours after work.  They seem to particularly act out when there's only one human at home.

I called him to tell him I was on my way home, and he asked me to get home ASAP as the greys were driving him nuts.  When I got home, he told me they'd been going nonstop and "checking off all of the items on their naughty list" including flying to the fridge, fighting with each other, eating magazines, throwing things on the floor, throwing things in the garbage, trying to eat onions...

This picture is dark, but it just makes me laugh.  It's very rare that both greys are on the fridge at once -- they usually stagger this stunt.  Max knows she's not supposed to be there -- as soon as I approached (to take a picture), her foot sprang up because she knew she was going to be removed:


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Thirsty?

Last night, Max was banging Thomas's water glass around.  (As an aside -- we have tons of glasses at home -- not sure why he insists on drinking from a mason jar.)  She was letting us know she was thirsty:


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Max vs. socks

Oh, how I wish I had a video of this, but my description will have to suffice.

Yesterday morning, Max was on her stand in the kitchen.  Thomas came downstairs, dressed for work, and threw his socks on the table while he went to get his shoes.  As he threw his socks, Max flew over and tackled the socks, mid-air.  Then, socks clenched in her feet, she rolled on her back and started attacking the socks.  She rolled over a few times and fell off of the table, landing on the floor, where she continued to wrestle with the socks while on her back.  (For a partial image of what this looked like, see Homeless Parrot's header -- but instead of Titus with a spoon, picture Max aggressively attacking socks.)

We could not stop laughing.  Attempts to recreate this for the camera were unsuccessful.

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Tragedy (barely) averted

Max could have died Saturday. 

Saturday timeline:

6:15-6:45 Max is just fine.  We have the greys out with us as we eat breakfast.  Around 6:45 we put them back in their cages as we have to run.

8:45 We return home from running.  Max is in the far back corner of her cage, playing with her rope perches.  She refuses to step up.  I think, "it took her 9 years, but Max is starting to show some more typical hormonal behaviors -- namely nesting with the rope perches and refusing to step up."

 8:45-11 We're at home; Max is the only parrot who won't come out of her cage.  She is really consumed with her rope perches.  I hope she's not forming an egg.

11-5 We're gone for the afternoon, volunteering at the parrot rescue.

5-6:30 We get home.  Although Max dances excitedly when she first sees me, she still refuses to step up and is playing with her rope perches.  We eat dinner and even that isn't enough to get her to come out of her cage.

6:30 After dinner, Thomas pulls Max's cage out from the wall to get a closer look at her and tell her to come out.  He realizes her foot is stuck in a toy!  That's why she hasn't been coming out of her cage -- not because she didn't want to, but because she couldn't.  And it took us hours to notice anything was wrong.

Thomas got her unstuck and we surveyed the damage.  She is not herself.  We immediately give her a bowl of water and she drinks a lot.  She perches on the water bowl, tucking the leg that had been stuck close to her body.  She puffs up her feathers:


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Stella's adventures

After this weekend, I'm pretty sure that Stella has taken then title of Most Demanding Parrot from the former co-holders of that title: Max and Rocky.  She's been in to everything, causing trouble; explorer extraordinaire.  We can't leave her alone for a second, or she's found trouble.

Sunday, Thomas was blending together a fruit smoothie for us.  Stella flew to his shoulder and then climbed down his arm to get close to the noisy blender:


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Weird fake eating

When Thomas curls up on the couch, Rocky often climbs up and hangs out in the crook of his knee.  This gives Thomas easy access to pet him:


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Goodnight kisses

When it's time for bed, we put all of the non-grey parrots in their cages.  Then, Thomas says, "time for bed, ladies!" and a grey parrot steps up on each of his hands.  The trio comes to find me and each grey gets a goodnight kiss from me.  Then Thomas begins his grey night routine of alternating kisses:


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Brian close-ups

More .  He's been even more adorable than usual lately; wanting to be with me as much as possible.  In these pictures, he's perched on my arm (I'm wearing a very red shirt.)


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Max and Stella

We also did some bottling of beer.  We were hoping the greys would just stay on their stands, but of course that didn't happen.

Here, Max is attempting to tip over the sample from this batch as Stella tries to get to a dark place to nest:


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Weekend birding

Thomas and I attended a birding festival over the weekend, which included a guided hike with experts.  This was fantastic as we are relatively new to birding.  We learned some identification tips and were just in awe of the knowledge/experience of the group leaders.  As we were walking, our guide would stop and say something like, "I heard a Cerulean Warbler in those trees" so everyone would look and sure enough, a Cerulean Warbler would appear.  How can people know so many bird calls?

We didn't take any good pictures of the birds, but here are a couple from the surroundings:


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Hungry greys

Apparently I had no idea how hungry she was!  Of course, she delayed her dinner as I had to take pictures of her antics instead of making it, so she had only herself to blame.

And maybe Stella who had to fly over as soon as she saw me taking pictures:


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Paper rolls

Max was a little upset that she wasn't getting any attention, she so started doing naughty things to make sure we didn't forget about her.  I wrap the greys' pellets in adding machine tape and hide them around their cages.  I had the adding machine tape, nicely rolled up, on the table.  Max pushed it off the table and was delighted when it wound up on the chair.  She followed the tape down and started playing:


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Brian takes a drink

After a morning run, Thomas was drinking Gatorade and Brian was running around the table.  He ran over to the glass and started tapping against it, which we took to be an indication that he wanted to see what was inside.

Thomas obliged him, tilting the glass down, expecting Brian to run away, but instead Brian ran into the glass!


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More hypocricy from me

D. Richard pointed out a while back (though in much nicer terms than I am using here!) that I am a bit hypocritical when it comes to the way I treat my parrots, specifically Brian.  There is a different set of rules for him than for my larger parrots.  The comment was made in reference to Brian eating breakfast off of our plates -- we'd never allow that from anyone else.  The same could be said for shoulders (Brian's the only one ever allowed on mine, though Thomas is a bit lax about that).  This morning, I thought of another incidence of hypocrisy on this front: destroying the newspaper.


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On alert

Thomas was removing Rocky's head feather sheaths last night.  Rocky loves this attention, as he can't reach those himself, but sometimes gets a bit bitey, so Thomas has to be sure to control his head.  In the wild, his warning of, "Hey, you're getting a little rough!" would be a beak full of feathers and his mate would adjust, but when your mate is a human and not a parrot, unintentional bloodshed can occur.  You can see little bits of severe macaw feather sheath on Thomas's pants:


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Blogger problems

My posts from yesterday have vanished!  Supposedly they will be back at some point; if not I will try to rewrite them next week.  In the meantime, here are pictures of two of my ladies at the rescue.

I don't understand how the macaw is still up for adoption.  She's been with us about a year and is one of the sweetest birds I have ever met.  As an added bonus, she's not particularly loud!  How has she not found a home?


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